


Chanticleer Calling From Calais

by ArchangelUnmei



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, French Resistance, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, Pre-Relationship, Radio, Spies & Secret Agents, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 13:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9386981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelUnmei/pseuds/ArchangelUnmei
Summary: "Salut, this is Chanticleer calling."Arthur leaned forward and tapped the receiver. "Good morning Chanticleer, Icarus here. How's the weather in Calais?""Not half so nice as it is in Dover." That was the correct code response, and Arthur relaxed a fraction. After almost a year, he thought he had a good ear for Chanticleer's French-accented voice, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is my gift for orita-lutao for the [2017 New Years FrUK Exchange](http://frukgiftexchange.tumblr.com/)! They asked for a human AU underground in occupied France, hopefully this will suffice.
> 
> The title is an homage to [Paris Calling](http://nuitdenovembre.livejournal.com/2194.html), by nuitdenovembre, which is my all time favorite WWII FrUK fic and one of the ones that got me into the pairing in the first place, long long ago. If you've never read it, go do so, it's a classic. ;w;

1943 had so far not been kind to Britain. 

Arthur Kirkland tucked his scarf more tightly around his neck as he stepped out of his small cottage and into the cool morning air. There were low clouds hanging overhead, casting everything in a dingy grey light. Arthur hadn't heard any shelling the night before, but the wind from the south carried a whiff of gunpowder and smoke. But then, that could just as easily be his over-active imagination. 

And still, even with the shelling from the Continent, Dover was better off than some other areas. Arthur had lost count of the number of nights he'd sat up late, waiting for the drone of planes overhead, one hand on the phone to call in even a little warning to his bosses in London. That was one of the reasons he'd been placed on the coast, after all. 

Habitually, he glanced up and down the street as he stooped to pick up his paper and tuck it under one arm, but all was quiet. Only his neighbor's cat was awake, watching him with suspicious yellow eyes. Arthur nodded politely to it as he passed, strolling down toward the harbour. 

He tried to be careful about routines. Even on English soil, he was still a part of the Special Operations Executive, and he never knew who might be watching. His role in Dover was chiefly passive and absolutely benign to his neighbors, but still. He tried not to form close ties, but also not distance himself so much that he aroused comment. He frequented the same cafes, attended church regularly and went on walks along the coast. If asked, he said he worked for a newspaper up north, and had been sent down to cover the home front war effort and the coastal defenses. It was a good reason for not having a visible job and spending so much time scribbling away on notepads, at least. 

And several days a week, always early in the morning, he walked down to a nondescript storefront too close to the harbour to really be profitable. It had been vacant when he arrived, cheap to rent and perfect for his purposes. It still _looked_ vacant, the front window cloudy with grime and paint peeling around the door, thick dust only disturbed by Arthur's footfalls. He hovered outside for a moment, until he was as sure as he could be that no one was watching him as he slipped into the supposedly vacant store and locked the door behind him. 

There was a little room upstairs that was the real reason for Arthur's visits, and he kept it a bit more cozy away from prying eyes. He'd managed to wrangle in a camp stove just large enough to make a kettle of tea on, and a tin or two of biscuits he could nibble while he discharged his duties. 

His radio equipment was set up on a table in the corner, as close to the Channel as possible. Every little bit helped when you were trying to radio occupied France. 

Arthur unwound his scarf and shrugged out of his overcoat, hanging them up on a peg and setting his hat neatly on top. He checked his watch, and decided there was just enough time to make tea before he had to man the radio. 

The radio crackled just as he sat down with tea in hand, and Arthur turned his attention to it, settling his headset on. He double-checked the frequency, and as he did the headset crackled again. 

"Salut, this is Chanticleer calling." 

Arthur leaned forward and tapped the receiver. "Good morning Chanticleer, Icarus here. How's the weather in Calais?" 

"Not half so nice as it is in Dover." That was the correct code response, and Arthur relaxed a fraction. After almost a year, he thought he had a good ear for Chanticleer's French-accented voice, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. 

"The weather here is fine as always, though we could do with a little less thunder." Chanticleer chuckled at the black humor, and Arthur smiled slightly himself. He glanced down at his notebook; he'd spent most of last night going over the messages he was meant to relay and working them over into the proper codes. "I meant to ask, how is your Uncle Maury doing?" 

"Ah, he is recovering well, he said that he'll send over a few packages of sweets sometime next week." 

Arthur was always envious of how _at ease_ Chanticleer sounded, as though they weren't rattling off coded messages discussing how to get French POW's and stranded British and American pilots back across the Channel to safety. "Well, however many he wants to send is fine with me. I have a sweet tooth, and I can always pass some off to my friends." He was glad they were speaking English this week. His French was excellent, but he always felt a little more silly speaking the coded phrases in his second language. He wondered if Chanticleer felt the same about English. 

"I'll let him know," Chanticleer promised. "And I'll let you know as soon as he knows when he might send them." 

"Lovely." Arthur glanced at his notebook again to remind himself of his next point. "Ah, my neighbors have a new dog, and all it does is bark." 

Chanticleer hummed thoughtfully, which Arthur suspected meant he was consulting his own code book for a response. "Have you tried moving away?" 

That wasn't a code, and it startled a laugh out of Arthur. Chanticleer always did this, breaking off into an actual conversation while he was thinking. It might not be perfectly professional, but Arthur appreciated it. Sometimes he felt so isolated in Dover, like he wasn't _really_ doing anything important, and he was glad of the reminder he wasn't in this alone. And besides, breaking away from the codes at times would only help confuse anyone who was listening in. "At this point the only place I could move would be North America, and that isn't happening." 

"Why not?" Chanticleer asked, so innocently that Arthur laughed again. 

"Please, have you met many Americans?" 

Chanticleer snorted in a way that meant he probably had. He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice had slid back into that smooth honeyed tone he tended to use when delivering code. "As for the dog, I'm not sure what I can do about it. Perhaps you should talk to your neighbors yourself." 

Arthur frowned faintly, dutifully writing the phrases down for proper decoding later. "Alright. I have some more messages, if you don't mind passing them on to your family?" 

"Not at all, Icarus, whenever you're ready." 

Arthur took a deep breath, steeling himself against the familiar feeling of utmost embarrassment as he delivered the coded instructions for the network of smugglers and sabotuers that Chanticleer acted as contact for. "John has a very long moustache. Rebecca collects peaches in her egg basket. Granny wants to visit Marie on Monday morning, but she's afraid she might catch cold. Betta has a new party dress." 

There was another pause as Chanticleer finished jotting down the messages. (Arthur wondered sometimes what his handwriting might be like, whether it was looping and florid or tight and cramped like Arthur's own.) "Merci, I'll make sure they get passed on. I have a few for you too." 

Arthur licked the end of his pencil and flipped to a new page. "Go ahead." He wrote down what Chanticleer said by rote; later he'd have time to go over it, decode the meaning, recode it to send to his bosses and then burn the originals. 

Finished, he glanced at his watch to judge the time. They tried to keep their transmissions as short as possible to minimize interception. "I should let you go, Chanticleer, I haven't had my breakfast yet." 

"Neither have I. Until next time, then?" 

"Mm," It was a little embarrassing how Arthur always found himself nodding at the radio set. "Yes. Stay safe, frog." 

"You too. Watch out for that thunder." 

The radio crackled again as Chanticleer's set was turned off, and Arthur sat back in his seat and rubbed his eyes. He kept his radio on, just in case, and set to work drafting Chanticleer's messages into a proper report. 

~*~

Arthur didn't know how much of Chanticleer was real. 

For all that they spoke several times a week, most of what was exchanged was coded business, and everything else was deliberately vague and contradictory. They were both careful to say nothing that could help anyone listening in from finding them. Sometimes they both said things that were wildly inaccurate, for the sake of throwing off possible pursuit. 

One morning, Chanticleer had Arthur nearly howling in laughter as he told the story of his sister, when she was small, getting stuck up a tree like a cat and Chanticleer having to climb up to retrieve her. But then another day he spoke of being an only child, growing up with his cousins for company. Arthur, too, was careful to keep anything he said vague. He had three brothers and one sister, but sometimes he said he was the younger of two brothers, or sometimes he had twin older sisters. Everything changed, all the time. 

It almost became a game, to see who could come up with the most outrageous but still _maybe_ believably true story. Arthur talked about climbing the Tower of London with his father and feeding the ravens. Chanticleer told him about growing up on a provincial dairy farm with enough details that Arthur wondered and worried that maybe that one _was_ true. 

Arthur was never sure what to call it, this relationship between himself and Chanticleer. It felt too close, too intimate for them to merely be 'coworkers' of a sense, but could you really call someone a friend if you didn't know their real name and had never seen their face? The number of times they broke code to tell wild stories, to simply try and make each other laugh during such dark times, made Arthur wonder if maybe you could. 

~*~

Arthur paused leafing through his mail, pulling out a creamy envelope with a slightly smeared drawing of a stylized rose on the back. There wasn't a return address, but he didn't need one. His immediate superior had a strange sense of humor and liked sending new instructions or changes in codes under the guise of a romantic note when he couldn't get them to Arthur personally. Arthur rolled his eyes, anticipating a new set of code phrases as he slit the letter open. Hopefully someone on Chanticleer's end would actually get word of the changes this time, it was a pain in the arse when they ended up mismatched and couldn't _technically_ verify each others' identities. 

("My name is Winston Churchill," Chanticleer said once when they hadn't been able to give each other the proper codes, very dryly and in a very bad imitation of Churchill's accent. "And I order you to tell me what I need to know." Arthur hadn't stopped laughing for a full ten minutes, even after they'd both gotten off the radio waves.) 

He tugged the single sheet of stationary out of the envelope, and paused. There was only one word written on it; _Reinette_. It didn't ring any bells, but Arthur pulled out his code book and leafed through it to be sure. If it was some sort of new code, it was going to require more explanation. Arthur went through his mail again, but there was only the one letter from his bosses. He sighed and resigned himself to waiting on whenever the bloody post decided to deliver the rest of his instructions. 

The next morning was Tuesday. As always, he rose early and walked down to his makeshift radio station, made himself a cup of tea and sat back to wait. This week, it was his turn to initiate contact, and he kept one eye on his watch as he sipped his tea. At precisely nine, he slipped on his headset and tapped the transmitter. 

"Good morning Calais, this is Icarus calling." 

The voice that came back was clear and strong, lilting French accent - the right accent, but the wrong voice. 

"Good morning Icarus, my name is Reinette. How is the weather in Dover?" 

For a long moment Arthur sat frozen, staring at the radio as though he'd never seen it before in his life. The voice from France was cheery and female and _wrong_ ; he'd gotten so used to Chanticleer's smooth baritone, perfect over the radio. In hindsight, the cryptic note from his boss had been informing him of the change in contact, but- 

But what had happened to Chanticleer? 

Arthur swallowed hard, trying to ignore that his hands were suddenly shaking. He clenched them tightly between his knees, forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand and unstuck his tongue from where he hadn't realized he'd been biting it. "Not half so nice as it is in Calais, Reinette." He paused, staring down at his notebook, the coded lines wavering until he couldn't read them. He felt light-headed, but his training kicked in and his voice didn't so much as hitch, even if the rest of that first conversation with Reinette was a blur. When it was finally done, he switched off his radio with a snap and sat staring at it for a long time, his mind wrapped in fog. 

Distantly, he recalled a bit over two years ago, when he'd gotten word that his next-eldest brother had been killed in one of the London bombing runs. It had been the same sort of feeling, like the whole world had been shattered and glued back together wrong, all the pieces jagged and mismatched, everything shrouded in a heavy, numbing haze. 

His shoulders were shaking, his hands still clasped between his knees so they wouldn't. In a far distant corner of his mind, Arthur was a little amazed that he was grieving so much for a man he'd never met. 

By the next time he was scheduled to speak to Reinette, he had a long list of questions, none of which he could ask. He wanted to sail across the Channel and find her and ask her everything that couldn't be transmitted in code, but his duty was to stay where he was, deliver his codes, and try and pick out information when he could. 

It wasn't until three weeks later that there was a knock on Arthur's door, an American pilot who'd been shot down over north-east France and smuggled back to Britain through Reinette's ( _Chanticleer's_ ) network of safe houses. As Arthur stood blinking at him, he just inclined his head and offered Arthur a folded scrap of paper. He left without a word, but Arthur barely noticed, his hands shaking as he unfolded the uncoded, impossibly precious hand-written note from Reinette herself. 

There had been an SS raid in Calais the Thursday previous to her first broadcast. Several houses had been ransacked for suspected resistance members and British collaborators, and no one was exactly sure who had been arrested, who had escaped and who might have been killed. Chanticleer's radio equipment and code books had been hidden under the floorboards in the attic of his house; they'd remained unfound and Reinette had been assigned to take charge of them in the aftermath and reestablish connection with Arthur and the British. She didn't know what had happened to Chanticleer, and couldn't find out without drawing too much attention. 

And Arthur was left with nothing more; no resolution, no answers. He hadn't realized how much a part of his life the voice on the other end of the radio had become until now he was suddenly gone. He didn't even know what the man _looked like_ , and somehow that didn't matter, he left a hole all the same. 

And yet, the war went on. Like a good Brit, Arthur swallowed his strange grief and kept working. He and Reinette worked well together, the organization fell back into place easily but it was never quite the same. Reinette didn't banter, and Arthur didn't feel comfortable conversing with her as he had at times with Chanticleer. At night he laid awake listening to the shelling on the coast and in the morning when the citizens of Dover came out to assess the damage and count the injured and dead, Arthur couldn't help but look at the grieving mothers and wonder if somewhere across the Channel Chanticleer had a family. He didn't know which version of Chanticleer's family was real, if any, but now he worried about whether or not they were safe, if they knew what had happened to Chanticleer. 

Weeks dragged into months, and Arthur would sometimes go for days at a time without thinking of Chanticleer. There was too much work to do, and with the invasion of the Continent looming ever closer Arthur worked himself ragged on too little sleep doing his part to ensure everything was ready and Reinette's cell was organized to assist Allied troops. 

And then... 

Arthur sat by his radio in Dover on June 6th, listening to the SOE's chatter in case he was needed for emergency relay. He felt numb, hearing status reports and casualty figures that rolled right off his back, both his remaining brothers somewhere in the invasion force. Outside the window, Dover was sleepy and quiet, the skies misting rain to dampen the silence. It felt curiously far away from war. There was nothing for Arthur to do, and so he sat, hands limp in his lap, feeling disconnected and useless. 

But there was plenty to do again in the aftermath. The invasion had overall been a success but Germany was not about to surrender based on that alone, and now the real fight began in earnest. The native French resistance groups were almost more important now than they were before, and Arthur found himself sitting at his radio for hours on end volleying a constant stream of messages back and forth. The rest of the war was a rush; thinking back on it later Arthur said he felt like he was fired off the starting blocks on D-Day and didn't stop sprinting until the German surrender. 

And when they did... 

It was curious. The day he received his official 'stand down' orders, Arthur felt like some tether he hadn't been aware of was cut. The war was _over_. There was still a lot to be done, of course, but suddenly Arthur felt like he was floating free. He wasn't needed in Dover anymore. There was nothing to tie him to Calais. 

He went home, back up north to the country where the landscape was curiously untouched by the war. It felt surreal; there were children evacuated from the cities everywhere, even his parents had taken in a pair of solemn little girls from the outskirts of London. He spent his days cleaning house after so long away, caring for his brothers (both had made it home, though his eldest brother had been badly wounded), making cups of tea and then sitting staring into them until long after they'd gone cold. What was he to do now? 

When a summons came from London, it was a relief. The war was over, but there was still work, and his boss wanted to attach him to a task force to help hunt down escaping German war criminals. Eager for something, _anything_ to do, Arthur agreed. His boss sent him details of the group's assembly; it was an international effort, made up chiefly of British, American and French agents, with a sprinkling of other nationalities for flavour, people who had distinguished themselves working with the Polish or Dutch or French resistance movements. 

Arthur walked into their first meeting feeling good about the new assignment. There were still little skirmishes being fought all across Europe, oppressed citizens rising up against their suddenly fleeing foes. They needed organization and direction and, perhaps, a bit of a restraining hand; the criminals needed to be sent to trial and made to pay for their crimes, not slaughtered in the streets. That was too easy. And Arthur was very good at organization. 

He paused by the door, taking in the scattering of people already in the large room. Most of the men were in uniform of one sort or another, but there were a few like Arthur who were in civilian clothes. They were gathered around in twos and threes, conversing with people they already knew or introducing themselves to those they didn't. Arthur heard mostly English, in various accents, but every now and then a few words in French or Dutch. 

Satisfied, he started to move deeper into the room when someone's laugh slipped through the ambient noise and wrapped itself around his heart, drawing him up short and pulling him around like a balloon on a string. Arthur whipped around, drawing curious looks from a few people around him, and found himself staring at the back of a man about his own height, wearing obviously brand new clothes with scuffed and scarred boots, his golden hair drawn back in a neat tail. 

The man laughed again, said something to his companion in French, his voice a smooth baritone that slid in right between Arthur's ribs and twisted into something like _hope_. 

"Chanticleer," the name slipped past his lips before he realized it, hushed with disbelief. But the man with the dawn-gold hair stopped speaking, his shoulders twitching stiff with shock as he turned to face Arthur. 

His eyes were very blue. That's what Arthur would remember noticing later; blue like a summer afternoon over the Channel between Dover and Calais. He had a scruff of a blond beard, except where a recent scar cut along his jaw, and one arm hung carefully in a sling. 

For a long moment they stood there, staring, as though both of them were afraid that if they moved, something would shift out of alignment. Arthur swallowed, wondering vaguely if he'd been mistaken after all, if the churning in his gut was going to turn out to be bitter disappointment instead of excitement. 

But then the Frenchman smiled, a little at a time like the sun coming out from behind clouds, even though it must have hurt his jaw to do so. He shifted around to face Arthur fully, offered him the hand that wasn't bound in a sling. Arthur, feeling the first stirrings of relief, of elation (Chanticleer was _alive_ ) reached out to take it. 

Their hands clasped, and then Chanticleer tugged him forward, pulling Arthur against his chest in a light hug, mindful of his injured arm. Arthur squawked in instinctive embarrassment, but didn't want to flail and risk hurting the other man. Chanticleer let go of his hand to wrap his good arm around Arthur's shoulders instead, and Arthur felt the moment he started to relax, sagging into Arthur like some weight had been taken off of him. 

"Icarus," he breathed into Arthur's hair, and Arthur pressed his face into Chanticleer's shoulder to hide how widely he was smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> ...I enjoyed their code names too much.  
>  _Chanticleer_ is a reference to both _The Canterbury Tales_ and the movie _Rockadoodle_ (shut up), where Chanticleer is the name of a rooster who believes he crows to bring the sun. The rooster is also the national bird of France.  
>  _Icarus_ of course refers to Greek legend, where a boy's overconfidence led him to fly too close to the sun, resulting in his death and a metaphor for hubris.  
>  _Reinette_ refers to Madame de Pompadour, mistress of the French king Louis XV. She was a strong and passionate woman and well ahead of her time. Reinette means 'little queen' and was what her closest friends called her.


End file.
